Noted.

Richard Kim on the hikers released by Iran, Allison Kilkenny on Occupy Wall Street, Josh Eidelson on the fight For women priests

September 28, 2011

THE HIKERS COME HOME: On July 31, 2009—just a few weeks after The Nation had published his cover story on the US-trained Iraqi Special Operations Forces—Shane Bauer, along with his friends Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal, were arrested by Iranian authorities along the Iran-Iraq border. In the days that followed, a small circle of Shane’s colleagues did what we could to fill in gaps of information and help their families get sound advice. It felt like a dramatic but short-term crisis; we anticipated Shane, Sarah and Josh’s release within hours, maybe days.

In fact, 781 days went by before the ordeal came to an end. Shane and Josh are finally reunited with their families and with Sarah, who was released last year. During their two years in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, they were held in almost complete isolation and allowed just fifteen minutes of phone calls and a single, brief visit from their mothers. According to Josh, they repeatedly went on hunger strikes just to get letters from loved ones. “In prison,” he says, “we lived in a world of lies and false hope.”

A few things stand out about this saga. First, the jaw-dropping courage and devotion of the families of Shane, Josh and Sarah—especially their mothers, Cindy Hickey, Laura Fattal and Nora Shourd. There was no justice system to which they could directly appeal, no diplomatic ties between the United States and Iran and, most distressing, no regular access to information about their children’s condition. Yet they waged a tireless campaign, taking to Twitter, Facebook, filmmakers, morning TV talk shows, radio and the global media.

The second thing that stands out is the courage of Iranian journalist Babak Sarfaraz, who reported for The Nation on the circumstances of the arrests. Sarfaraz and his researchers risked their lives to bring us the story, which was published on June 23, 2010, and quoted witnesses alleging that the three hikers had, in fact, been abducted on the Iraqi side of the border.

Finally, now that Shane is free, it is remarkable to hear his account of the incarceration; his compassion for others who are still unjustly being held by the Iranian regime; and his frank but nuanced acknowledgment of how, in the eyes of that regime, the US government’s treatment of “war on terror” suspects played a role in legitimizing his abuse at the hands of Iranian prison guards.

“There are people in Iran who are imprisoned for years simply for attending a protest, for writing a pro-democracy blog or for worshiping an unpopular faith,” he said in a statement, calling on Iran to “release all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience immediately.”

“In prison,” he went on, “every time we complained about our conditions, the guards would immediately remind us of comparable conditions at Guantánamo Bay. They would remind us of CIA prisons in other parts of the world and the conditions that Iranians and others experience in prisons in the US. We do not believe that such human rights violations on the part of our government justify what has been done to us…. However, we do believe that these actions on the part of the US provide an excuse for other governments, including the government of Iran, to act in kind. Thank you.” RICHARD KIM

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MARKET RALLY: When the media activist group Adbusters called for protesters to “occupy Wall Street,” organizers hoped for a “fusion of Tahrir with the acampadas of Spain.” What they got instead were a few hundred young activists camped out in Lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park. But a week later, hundreds more would take to the streets. Their demand: an end to the country’s spiral into a corporatocracy.

Most of the protesters at Occupy Wall Street describe their resistance broadly, as a revolt against an unregulated hypercapitalism that has widened the class divide in the United States. Some have more specific grievances. Matthew Prowless joined because a bank recently seized his home. “I’m unemployed; there’s no job prospects on the horizon,” he said. “I have two children, and I don’t see a future for them. This is the only way I see to effect change.” At times the protest has broadened to target other forms of injustice. On September 22 it was transformed into a vigil in honor of Troy Davis, who had been executed in Georgia the night before.

Videos have captured aggressive tactics used by the New York Police Department against peaceful protesters, about a hundred of whom have been arrested. These tactics include dragging detainees across asphalt and macing young women as they stood in a holding pen. While such abuse has garnered publicity for the cause—and the lack of mainstream news coverage has become a meme in itself—it’s difficult to predict how long Occupy Wall Street will last or what it will achieve. So far, the movement has inspired similar protests in Chicago and Los Angeles.

“Wall Street is the pinnacle of corporate greed that bankrupted the country, and is imposing severe cuts on the middle and working class,” said Chris Priest, a representative from US Uncut. “They’ve seen no consequence for the financial depression they caused.” ALLISON KILKENNY

REBEL PRIESTS: On October 17, Catholic groups will send a delegation to the Vatican to push for the ordination of female priests. The trip was announced in September amid increasing controversy over the Maryknoll religious order’s threat to expel Father Roy Bourgeois for refusing to recant his support for women’s ordination. More than 200 US priests have signed a statement drafted in his defense by the Catholic group Call to Action. One of them, Father Fred Daley, says many more have not signed for fear of reprisals, given “the present climate of the church.”

Bourgeois is the founder of SOA Watch, which organizes protests outside the infamous military-training school formerly known as the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. For two years he headlined a thirty-two-city Shatter the Stained Glass Ceiling tour, organized by Call to Action. Maryknoll has sent him two canonical warnings this year; Bourgeois’s canon lawyer believes it is acting at the behest of the Vatican, which faces rising clergy opposition to the ban on female priests. Upon its arrival in Rome in October, the delegation will seek an audience with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the body formerly known as the Inquisition), which oversees church doctrine.

“Change in the church always comes from the bottom,” says Daley. “Many of the excommunicated historically became saints.” JOSH EIDELSON